10/29/2004

An Easy Way For Cash-Strapped Cities To Save $200 Million

If a city wants to get or keep a major-league baseball team these days, the usual approach is to build a fancy stadium for big, big bucks. For example, here in Milwaukee we built Miller Park (aka "Wrigley Field North" to the hundreds of thousands of Cubs fans who come here) for a cost of around $500 million. Now Washington, D.C. is building a new stadium for the old Expos at a cost of around $440 million. Since these teams are only worth about $220 million, why not have the city buy the team directly, and skip with building the expensive ballparks? And why does nobody ever mention this?